‘It is better to have a quick death in the sea than a slow death in Egypt,’ Doaa said to her fiancé Bassem.
On Saturday 6 September 2014, the call finally came. Doaa carefully packed a change of clothes, their toothbrushes, a large plastic bag of dates and a big bottle of water in the Mickey Mouse backpack she’d kept from her school days in Syria.
She carefully wrapped their passports, engagement contract, mobile phone and money – the 500 euros and 200 Egyptian pounds they still had after their two previous failed attempts to leave the country – in plastic bags and secured each bundle underneath the straps of her tank top, the first of four layers of clothing she had carefully selected for the journey.
At 11 pm, their bus, packed with other refugees, came to a halt about half a kilometer from a barren sandy beach. ‘Get out and run to the shore!’ the smugglers shouted. They noticed other buses already parked there and hundreds of people ahead of them wading through the shallow waves. Bassem kicked off his flips-flops, took Doaa’s hand and they sprinted towards the water. He thought they would somehow be safer if they got ahead of the crowd.
One or two wooden dinghies were moving towards them, but to reach them they had to struggle through breaking waves until the water was up to Bassem’s shoulders. It would have been over Doaa’s head but her thin life jacket and Bassem’s tight grip kept her afloat. The life jacket rose to the surface and circled her face; she realized then that the beach shop had sold them fakes. She did her best to keep her face above the water.
They reached the dinghy and Bassem pulled himself over the side while a smuggler lifted Doaa up. Everyone was ordered to sit still as they were taken to a larger boat waiting on the horizon.
Hundreds of people were already on board when they climbed on to the deck. They soon learned that a good number of these weary travelers had already been on the boat for days, drifting at sea, while the smugglers impatiently waited for others to arrive so that they could fill every spare inch of the trawler. The more people they could pack in, the more profit they would make.
Bassem estimated there were at least 500 refugees on the boat when they finally set off. If each passenger had paid 2,500 US dollars as they had, the smugglers would be collecting more than 1 million US dollars for this journey. Only half of the passengers had life jackets and Doaa suspected that many of them were no better than hers.
Doaa started to talk to a family of four seated close by. They were from Damascus and the parents were trying their best to comfort their two little girls, Sandra, six, and Masa, 18 months.
Everyone on the boat must have a sad story to tell, Doaa thought as she watched Masa and her mother make their way to the stinking toilet, but few people would mention their past. Their talk was instead focused on the future, getting through the ordeal of these miserable days at sea and starting new lives.
As the days stretched forward, a kind of solidarity formed. People reached out to help the children – entertaining them with stories, offering them sips of water or biscuits. Nobody had any idea where they were. There were no landmarks, just a vast body of water surrounding them. Every now and then people tested their mobile phones for a signal, but there was none.
On the second night the passengers shivered in the cold, their thin layers of clothes soaked from the waves that had splashed on to the deck. When the sun rose on the third day, it became swelteringly hot. Doaa’s clothes stuck to her and the plastic-wrapped documents and phone felt as though they were melting into her skin.
It was late afternoon when another boat approached. ‘Move,’ the smugglers said. They had to switch boats if they wanted to continue on the next leg of their journey. To Doaa’s surprise only about 150 passengers disembarked along with her and Bassem.
One of the smugglers explained that the waves were too high for a boat containing so many people, so they had to split up. Doaa looked around, confused yet hopeful, and noticed that the two little girls Sandra and Masa and their parents were with them.
People began to relax and the mood brightened a little as they sensed they might be getting closer to their destination. The boat seemed to move faster than before over the now calm sea as passengers laughed and joked together.
Relieved parents helped their children remove their life vests so that they could be more comfortable. Some took refuge beneath plastic rice sacks that had been tied together and rigged to provide shade, but Doaa fell asleep in the sun.
She’d only been napping for a few minutes when the sounds of an engine and men shouting insults in an Egyptian dialect startled her. A blue fishing boat was approaching at great speed. Doaa could see about ten men on board. ‘You dogs!’ they shouted. ‘Sons of b*****s! Where do you think you’re going? You should have stayed to die in your own country.’
They began ha hrefing planks of wood at the refugees, their eyes wild with hatred. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ one of the smugglers shouted. ‘Sending these dogs to the bottom of the sea,’ came the reply.
The fishing boat appeared to move away, but turned back and accelerated towards them on a direct collision course. There was a scramble for life jackets and Doaa could hear the men laughing as they ha hrefed more pieces of wood. She couldn’t believe that anybody would try to sink a boat carrying children. All around were screams of terror and people shouting desperate prayers.
The fishing boat rammed into the side of theirs. The impact was sharp and sudden. Bassem grabbed Doaa, managing to stop her from falling overboard. Then she realized that their boat was beginning to turn on its side. She had one hand on the railing to keep her balance and the other clutched Bassem’s hand. ‘Listen to me, Doaa,’ he said. ‘Keep hold of my hand. Don’t let go and we will make it. I promise, I won’t let you drown.’
The fishing boat rammed their boat again and Bassem’s hand was yanked away. Doaa lost sight of him in the mass of people tumbling forward. She held on to the railing as tightly as she could, but as the boat plunged downward, she slid into the sea, sinking below the surface, trapped beneath the plastic rice sacks. There was no air to breathe and no path to the surface.
Then she saw a glimmer of sunlight and a tear in the plastic. She stretched her hands through the opening and pulled herself up, gasping for air when she reached the surface and grabbing on to the edge of the sinking boat.
Overwhelmed with panic, Doaa began shouting for Bassem, over and over again, terrified that he might be one of the dead and dying all around her. Then she heard his voice above the screams and spotted him in the sea. The metal of the boat was cutting into her hands. She longed to get to Bassem, but she couldn’t swim and the boat was sinking at an angle that was drawing her towards the spinning propeller; people were being dragged into its blades. ‘Let go!’ Bassem cried as he tried to swim towards her, but the waves moved him away.
Doaa closed her eyes and threw herself into the water. She felt her headscarf being yanked away and the ends of her long hair being pulled by those drowning below her as they tried to save themselves. Somehow she managed to push their hands away and tried to stay afloat, doing her best to tread water as she watched the boat sink into the waves.
Then she spotted Bassem swimming towards her with a child’s rubber ring. ‘Put this on so that you can float,’ he said as he passed the partially inflated ring over her head and held on to it, treading water beside her.
Darkness slowly descended on the survivors floating in the sea, which turned black and choppy. Doaa shivered as her wet clothes clung to her and she gripped Bassem’s arm, terrified that he would float away. Hours passed and the loud sobs of the children became weak whimpers.
Between 50 and 100 people had survived the shipwreck, but as the night wore on, more would die from cold, exhaustion and despair. Some who had lost their families gave up, taking off their life jackets and allowing themselves to sink into the sea.
Amid the despair, a solidarity emerged among those who were left, clinging to boards and remains of the wreckage. People with life jackets moved towards those without them, offering a shoulder to hold on to for a rest. Those whose spirits remained strong comforted and encouraged those who wanted to give up.
An older man swam towards them, clutching a small baby on his shoulder and looked at Doaa with pleading eyes. ‘I’m exhausted, could you please hold Malek for a while?’ The baby was wearing pink pajamas and crying. The man explained that he was her grandfather, a fisherman from Gaza, and that 27 members of his family had been on the boat and drowned. ‘Please look after her. Consider her part of you. My life is over.’
Bassem and Doaa focused their attention on the small child, stroking her head, taking comfort from having the child’s body next to theirs. Malak’s grandfather, seeing she was in good hands, said goodbye. The next time they looked in his direction they saw him floating face down in the sea, just ten meters away.
Malek was shivering. Doaa had heard somewhere that rubbing a person’s veins along their wrists keeps them warm so she tried that and began to sing songs that her mother had sung to her. Bassem was also being lulled to sleep by her singing, but Doaa knew that she had to keep him awake or he might slip away. She clapped her hands at the side of his head to rouse him and noticed his face was turning from yellow to blue.
‘Allah, give Doaa my spirit so that she may live,’ Bassem said. ‘Don’t say that,’ Doaa pleaded, knowing that he was exhausted and losing consciousness. She felt his hands slip from her grasp and watched him go limp and slide under the water. Doaa tried to pull him back towards her, but he was beyond her reach. ‘Bassem,’ she cried, over and over again. ‘Don’t go, I can’t live without you!’ But he was dead.
For Doaa this was the end of everything. She wanted to let herself slip into the sea with Bassem. But then she felt Malak’s tiny arms around her neck and realized that she alone was responsible for this child. She had to try to keep her alive.
It was now Wednesday afternoon. Doaa had been in the water for two days and there were only about 25 survivors left. Among them was the family she had met on the boat with two small daughters; Sandra and Masa were both wearing life jackets but the older girl, Sandra, was having convulsions. Her father was holding her, trying to soothe her through his sobs.
Sandra’s mother swam towards Doaa holding Masa. ‘Please save my baby, I won’t survive.’ Without hesitation Doaa reached for Masa and placed her beside Malak, whose head nestled just below Doaa’s chin.
As night fell, the sea became shrouded with a heavy fog. The girls began to shift restlessly and cry and Doaa did her best to calm them, but was afraid to move her aching arms in case she lost her grip on them. Their weight on her chest almost stopped her breathing and she longed for a drink of water. But she felt such a deep connection to these two children that their survival was more important to her than her own life.
After four days in the ocean, with nothing to eat or drink, Doaa wanted to give up but Masa and Malak filled her with the determination to live. Eventually the few remaining survivors were spotted by a chemical tanker, the CPO Japan.
The men on the tanker’s lifeboat were amazed to see such a slight young woman still alive among so many corpses. She pleaded with them to save the babies nestled beneath her thin jacket first. They were taken and wrapped carefully in thermal blankets.
Then Doaa was wrapped in a blanket and someone placed a wet sponge between her lips so that she could draw moisture from it. Tasting fresh water she suddenly felt thirstier than she had ever been for all those days floating at sea.
Meanwhile, the baby girls were not moving. It would take them four hours to reach Crete and the medical attention they so badly needed. The crew did everything they could to help with all the first aid training they knew, but they were unable to resuscitate little Malak. She had survived four days in the water but died soon after she was rescued. Doaa began to sob when she heard the news. She felt as if her heart was being torn out of the exact spot where Malak had rested her head.
Masa was taken to a pediatric unit in Heraklion, Crete. She was on the verge of death, suffering from acute kidney failure, hypothermia and dehydration, and the doctors worked around the clock to save her. Her fight for life became a top news story in Greece and the hospital switchboard was flooded with calls from families wanting to adopt her.
Doaa was given a home in Crete by the translator who first heard her story. He and his wife had four daughters of their own. Meanwhile, word was spreading through Arab social media about the woman who survived one of the worst refugee shipwrecks and saved a baby girl. She was flooded with messages from families who had lost loved ones, each one reminding her of the grief of losing Bassem and Malak.
Then one message caught her eye: ‘I think you have saved my niece Masa,’ with a photo attached. It was the same Masa she had cradled in her arms at sea. She replied immediately, ‘Yes, that is the same Masa who has rescued me!’
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